As Washington squabbles over health care and financial reform, another political disagreement is slithering under most Americans’ radar: snakes. Snakes on a plane and snakes in the wild. Native snakes and invasive snakes. Venomous snakes and snakes that are just really, really big.
The vast majority of Americans don’t live in the same areas as dangerous snakes. But in three heavily populated states, Florida, Texas, and California, changing snake populations are altering how—and how often—we encounter our legless reptilian friends.
Florida
Florida is rolling in reptiles, but it’s unlikely you’ll be killed by one. The odds that a person in Florida will die from contact with a venomous snake or lizard in a year are 1 in 38,970,000. And the type of snake that seems to be taking over isn’t even venomous.
Burmese pythons, native to India, lower China, and the Malay Peninsula, have been swamping Florida Everglades National Park for the last few years. The snakes are popular pets: According to the U.S. Geological Survey, more than 300,000 of them have been imported into the U.S. in the last thirty years. Keeping pet pythons is legal in the U.S., but releasing them isn’t. Yet overwhelmed python owners often set the snakes free when they near their fifteen-foot potential. They’re top predators who adapt easily to a wide variety of habitats, hence their rapid spread through south Florida.
What’s so bad about pythons on the loose? Although there was a recent tragic case of a Florida toddler asphyxiated by a pet python, their threat to human life is minimal. The same can’t be said about their threat to native Florida wildlife, like the Key Largo woodrat, the American alligator, and the wood stork. An invasive species, the python is able to prey on Florida’s native fauna because those animals have not yet evolved defenses against the snake.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently proposed a rule to list the python, along with nine other invasive giant constrictor snakes, as “injurious wildlife.” If adopted, the listing would prohibit the importation or interstate transportation of the Burmese python and its eggs, except for academic or zoological purposes. That’s where the politics comes in: Republican lawmakers claim the new regulation would hurt business, causing “severe economic pain for thousands of Americans by destroying livelihoods.”
